Dolphins Blogs

Sunday, November 11, 2007

While seeing Michigan and OSU getting knocked off today was fun, it presents a major problem to Penn State. Penn State has been knocked out of playing in the Outback Bowl because of Illinois' upset victory over the Buckeyes. Plus, with OSU and Michigan losing, that means the loser next week will be out of contention for a BCS at large bid. Heck, if OSU loses, than they're the ones playing in the Outback Bowl as Illinois will climb to #2 in the conference (assuming they win next week). The Illinois win clinches them at least the #3 slot in the Big Ten standings because of victories over both the Nittany Lions and Badgers.

Right now, Wisconsin and Penn State sit tied for 4th in conference at 4-3 apiece. Wisconsin travels to Minneapolis next week (meaning they get a week off/free win) while the Lions journey to East Lansing to play a UCLA-ish Michigan State team. However, do the outcomes of these games really matter? From what I can find online, the Alamo Bowl and Champs Sports Bowl both say they take either the #4 or #5 team from the Big Ten. Those two teams are already going to be PSU and UW. What really matters is what bowl wants what team. My guess is that the Champs Bowl is going to go for PSU, probably because they can get a decent base of PSU fans to Orlando (or at least more than Wisconsin). However, I would rather the Alamo Bowl go to PSU.

If Penn State ends up in the Champs Sports Bowl, they'll be facing the #4 ACC team. Right now, the opponent would likely be Wake Forest. An interesting game, but I'd rather face the #4 Big 12 school which right now looks to be Texas. While that would in a sense be a home game for the Longhorns, I think it would be fun and interesting to see how we perform. A game against WF would probably be boring. Either we'd beat them fairly easily or Morelli would play like an idiot and let it stay close up until the end.